Chosen Soldier

by Dick Couch

  Block, like all enlisted Green Berets who become officers, has been through the Q-Course twice. When an enlisted Special Forces soldier elects to become an officer and qualifies for officer training, he does not have to reselect, but he must, as a newly commissioned officer, again complete Phases II, III, and IV.

  “The groups need every one of you,” Captain Block continues, “but we’ll not cut corners and we’ll not relax our standards. You have to perform, and you have to demonstrate character. Show us you want to be a Special Forces warrior, and forget about everything else. For the next five weeks, consider yourself on deployment. And good luck to each of you.”

  The following day, the class draws weapons at Fort Bragg and moves en masse to Camp Mackall and the Rowe Training Facility. The Phase II area is a scattering of temporary metal buildings dating back to the 1950s. The twenty-five-by-fifty-foot metal-sided structures each house a student detachment of twelve to fourteen students—a student Operational Detachment Alpha. Most of the student ODAs are assigned their own building, but given the needs of the Special Forces groups and the nation for more Green Berets, some of the Phase II ODAs are billeted in recently erected tents near the main compound. These are semipermanent structures served by generators and portable toilets. The tents are erected on existing concrete slabs—pads that date back to World War II, when they served as foundations for the temporary barracks hastily built for soldiers preparing for the invasion of occupied France. Both the tents and the buildings are partitioned in the now-familiar barracks-area/operational-bay configuration. The shower, mess, and laundry facilities are in the central area of the Rowe Training Facility and serve Phase II students as well as other training venues at the facility.

  Life in the team huts and tents is conducted as if the student ODAs were on operational deployment, which means they move about the Rowe Training Facility as a team or in pairs, and when they sleep in the barracks, two men will always be awake and on guard duty. They have to be prepared to move, fight, or fend off an attack at all times.

  Class 1-05 is organized as student ODAs, and all training evolutions are conducted within the individual ODA or a pair of ODAs. Each ODA or team is assigned a cadre team sergeant who is a veteran sergeant first class. Most student ODAs also have an assigned teaching/ training assistant. He is a civilian employee of the Northrop Grumman Corporation and, almost without exception, a retired Green Beret. These civilian trainers are called different things in different phases, but in Phase II, they are referred to as training assistants and considered cadre. Like the soldiers in Class 1-05, I’m also assigned to a student ODA. My team is ODA 811, usually referred to simply as “eight-one-one.” My cadre sergeant is Sergeant First Class Paul Janss.

  A word about student ODAs and cadre sergeants. Much of Special Forces training is conducted in groupings or teams that reflect the basic deployment unit of Special Forces, the Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA). The student ODA will often mirror the deployed ODA in size and composition. Operationally, it’s usually twelve Green Berets per ODA, but in training that number can range from ten to sixteen soldiers per student ODA. It’s the same for assignments within the student ODA—detachment commander or team leader, team sergeant, intel sergeant, weapons sergeant, and so on. The numbering—say, 811, as in the case of my student ODA for Phase II—would also reflect a functioning ODA’s group, battalion, and company affiliation. For training in the Q-Course, they’re somewhat artificial. An instructor in the form of a cadre sergeant or assigned cadre officer will often accompany these student ODAs throughout a phase or for certain portions of phase training.

  Paul Janss was born in Norway and went to high school in Alexandria, Virginia. He speaks Norwegian and Russian, and is a veteran of the 3rd and 5th Special Forces Groups, but now calls 5th Group home. Jan, as he’s called, enlisted in the Army in 1980 and served in the 75th Ranger Regiment from ’83 through ’85. He has deployed extensively in Africa and the Middle East. Sergeant Janss is five-nine, lean, and as hard as dried leather. Though he’s one of the older cadre sergeants, he can run—effortlessly, mile after mile. Few of his cadre sergeants want to run with him; few can. He is quiet, personable, and approachable. While he yearns to return to group and operational-deployment rotation, he’s totally committed to teaching small-unit tactics to the next generation of Green Berets. Jan is qualified as an 18 Charlie SF engineering sergeant and as an 18 Delta SF combat medic.

  Jan’s training ODA for Class 1-05 has thirteen men: two captains and five enlisted soldiers who have returned to Fort Bragg for Phase II, and six X-Rays—a much higher percentage than with most student ODAs. Once they’re settled into their billets, Sergeant Janss takes them on a tour of the Phase II area and the Rowe Training Facility. For all, this is a reacquaintance of the area, except for the weapons-cleaning shed and the Phase II team huts. This is the first time any of them have carried real weapons, with blank adapters, at Camp Mackall. Before we look at the training, let’s take a look at the men in 811—my student ODA. First, the X-Rays.

  They are Specialists Antonio Costa, David Altman, and Tom Kendall and PFCs Roberto Pantella, Tim Baker, and Jamie Wagner. All of them, with the exception of Wagner, went to selection right after their first iteration of the Pre-SFAS course. Wagner is a twenty-eight-year-old from Baton Rouge. He arrived at Fort Bragg from basic and airborne training insufficiently prepared physically for the rigors of Special Forces training. After his second round of Pre-SFAS, he was selected for Special Forces along with Baker, Costa, Altman, Pantella, and Kendall.

  “Back home, I was a computer tech when I decided to join the Army,” he tells me. “Basic training and jump school got me in shape, but not enough for SF training. I needed the extra work, and they were right to hold me back for a second Pre-SFAS. Now that I’ve been selected, I’m ready to move ahead.”

  The five experienced soldiers assigned to student ODA 811 all come from the conventional Army, and as in all small units, these veterans will form the backbone of the student ODA. They’re led by Sergeant First Class Stan Hall. Hall’s father was a career infantry officer, and he grew up in the Army and on the move; he went to four different high schools. He’s an experienced soldier with four years in the 25th Infantry Division, four years in the 82nd Airborne, and a year and a half as a drill sergeant. He’s also Ranger qualified. When I met him, Hall struck me as a mature, efficient leader, and probably one of the reasons the Phase II cadre assigned so many X-Rays to his training ODA.

  “I went through selection almost two years ago,” he tells me, “and then I got orders to Fort Benning as a drill instructor. I thought I’d never have the chance to go SF. But I managed to get an early release to come to Phase II. I’m twenty-seven, and I need to get on with this before I get too much older.”

  There are three sergeants or buck sergeants assigned to 811: Daniel Barstow, Byron O’Kane, and Aaron Dunn. Dan Barstow is from Canton, Ohio, and joined the Army right out of high school. He’s been in the Army for four years and came from a military police unit assigned to Schofield Barracks and the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii. He met his wife, also an MP, in Hawaii. While he attends Phase II, she’s serving in a security role in Kabul, Afghanistan. Byron O’Kane is a seven-year Army veteran from Wichita, Kansas. He’s an infantryman and saw action in Iraq with the 1st Infantry Division. He married just before he joined the Army and the couple now has a new baby girl, their first. Before enlisting, he was training as an emergency medical technician and hopes to become an 18 Delta Special Forces medic. O’Kane and his young family just arrived at Fort Bragg from a tour in Germany. Aaron Dunn is from Dallas and has been in the Army five years. He is a tall, thin, quiet Korean–African American with a striking resemblance to Tiger Woods. He’s married with a three-year-old son. Dunn came from a technical billet in the Army; he’s a radar technician. For most of his Army career, he has been repairing radars and aviation electronics. When we spoke, he was concerned about Phase II and small-unit tactics since he’s been with
an aviation battalion for the last three years and has spent very little time in the field.

  Specialist Frank Dolemont is the most junior of the “regulars” and, in terms of combat, the most experienced. Dolemont dropped out of high school in his junior year to work the family farm in Oklahoma. After a series of odd jobs, he joined the Army at twenty-five. Following basic and advanced training, he went straight to the 75th Ranger Regiment. He has two combat tours as a Ranger.

  “My last tour, I was a squad leader,” he tells me, “and it was on that second tour that it all came together for me. I knew that this is what I was born to do—to lead in combat and to teach others how to perform in combat. I’m finally where I belong.”

  The two officers are very experienced and very different. Captain Matt Anderson grew up in Meridian, Mississippi, and enlisted in the Army after his high school graduation in 1991. He has served in the 82nd Airborne and the 75th Ranger Regiment. He’s also worked in Army intelligence and counterintelligence. He attended college at night to earn a degree in psychology while at Fort Bragg, which allowed him to qualify for Officer Candidate School. Like many SF officer candidates, he’s an infantry officer. Anderson is handsome, easygoing, and outgoing; it seems as if he knows everyone and they seem to know him. He is unmarried, but has two daughters from a previous marriage. Anderson is six foot and a solid two hundred pounds. I have to finally ask him about his ethnic background—he looks as if he could be Arab or Lebanese. “No, sir,” he chuckles, “I’m just a black guy.”

  Captain Miguel Santos grew up in a small town in Georgia. His parents are both Cuban immigrants. He’s been in the Army nine years: four at West Point and five as an armor officer—a tanker. Like Anderson, Hall, and Dolemont, he has earned his Ranger tab. He spent close to a year in Iraq, where he saw action as an armored scout platoon leader. He came to selection from a tour in Germany, where he met his wife. They’re expecting their first child while Santos is in the Q-Course—during Phase IV, if the captain and the baby both stay on schedule. Miguel Santos is short, perhaps five-six, and in superb physical condition. He is quiet, observant, and very intelligent.

  “There are two things that made me want a career in Special Forces,” he says to me. “The first is 9/11 and the role SF will play in the war on terrorism. The second is the quality of the NCOs in Special Forces; they’re the best in the Army. These are the kind of men I want to serve with and to lead. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I think we have a pretty good group,” Sergeant Janss tells me on the first day of training. “The two officers seem solid and focused, and there’s a good range of experience in the veteran soldiers. Sergeant Hall is particularly strong. I’ve spent some time with the records of the X-Rays, and they are a talented bunch—inexperienced, but there’s a lot of potential there. Phase II will be particularly important for them as they will have to display leadership in small-unit tactical situations. And we have four Rangers. For them, some of this will be a review—they’ve seen it before. My job is to teach, monitor, coach, and evaluate these men. I expect the Rangers to serve as my teaching assistants.”

  In addition to the Rangers in his ODA, Jan has Gary Courtland, or “Mister” Courtland as the candidates refer to him. Courtland is a recent Army retiree working for Northrop Grumman with seventeen years of his twenty-year Army career in Special Forces. He works part-time with Phase II while pursuing a master’s degree in education. In the late 1980s, he was with 7th Group and in El Salvador. He was a qualified 18 Echo and 18 Foxtrot—communications sergeant and intelligence sergeant—and a qualified sniper. Courtland is a mild, neutral man and looks like what he is studying to become: a high school math teacher.

  The day after the candidates move into their team barracks, the cadre sergeants take them out for a four-mile ruck march—a brisk shakedown walk to reacquaint them with moving under their rucks. Under Sergeant Stan Hall’s direction, the X-Rays carry the machine guns. Tom Kendall carries the big M240 while Roberto Pantella and Jamie Wagner carry the squad assault weapons, or SAWs. Tim Baker straps on the M240 tripod, which weighs as much as gun itself, to the top of his ruck. That afternoon, they shed their combat load and each man runs the obstacle course twice. The cadre sergeants are watching to see who is having trouble under their rucks and who lacks upper-body strength, which is a prerequisite to performing well on Nasty Nick. The X-Rays are all well conditioned to this, but a few of the veterans are found to have let their conditioning slip between their selection and coming back for Phase II.

  The next day, between a 0500 reveille and breakfast, the class gets the first of four sessions in hand-to-hand fighting, or unarmed combat training. After breakfast in the facility chow hall, the rest of the day is taken with round-robin combat tactical training. As a student ODA, they spend an hour at each training station. There are nine of them: loading and firing the M240 and M249 SAW machine guns; arming and positioning of claymore mines; operating the PRC-119 radio; securing and searching an enemy prisoner of war—an EPW; using night-vision goggles (NVGs); using a laser target designator; calling for artillery fire; encrypting and operating the PRC-148 radio; and properly conducting a vehicle search. They work as a team except during the EPW and vehicle searches. At these two training stations, they work in pairs, one man covering while the other executes a phase of the search. For the vehicle searches, they use a Humvee configured as a pickup truck. For the EPWs, they use each other, and this requires some discomfort on the part of the EPW role players. There are too many stories coming back from Iraq about insurgents playing possum with a live grenade, waiting to be searched by Americans. The cadre sees that the training is realistic, and that means it’s a little rough on the men who serve as EPW training partners. Interestingly, the term “POW,” or “prisoner of war,” refers to Americans taken captive, but enemy prisoners are always referred to as EPWs.

  The next day, the student ODAs head into the field for five days and four nights of training. Eight-one-one and its sister ODA, 812, bivouac in a wooded area near one of the many lakes in Camp Mackall. Individually, the two ODAs move under their rucks down a dirt road for a mile or more to their training area, a large meadow bordered by a stand of scrub oak and pine. One corner of the meadow serves as a classroom while the large, open area is suitable for walking through formations and battle drills. Once the teams become proficient in their movements in the open, they take the drills into the woods. Jan and Sergeant First Class Sid Warner, 812’s cadre sergeant, begin with the basics of individual movement before moving on to squad and fire-team movements.

  For several hours, they run individual battle drills in the meadow and woods. Over a hundred-meter stretch of ground, they work in six- and seven-man squads to practice fire-and-maneuver drills. This calls for three or four of them to jump to their feet, sprint for ten or fifteen meters, and dive for cover—up, bound forward, and down. Once down, they lay down a base of fire, while their squad mates make their dash. They start by yelling BANG-BANG, BANG-BANG. Very soon they are firing blanks and quickly changing magazines. They do this with their LBEs, or combat vests, and, occasionally, with full rucks. The temperature is in the mid-fifties, and it’s raining lightly. Soon they are drenched from the precipitation and their own sweat. As they run, they’re told to look for cover and/or concealment at the end of their sprint. They are also reminded to keep their dashes short so as not to remain a target for too long.

  “Think like an enemy gunner,” Sergeant Warner tells them. “Always be thinking, ‘I’m up, he sees me, I’m down.’ And just before you go down, try to locate the next place you’ll run to.”

  On dash after dash, between the chatter of automatic fire, the woods echo with the soldiers yelling, “I’m up, he sees me, I’m down!”

  “There’s nothing magical about small-unit tactics,” Jan says, “but it’s a core discipline of just about everything we do on deployment today. These guys will spend a lot of their time teaching this when they get to their groups. They’ll teach it to Afgha
ns, Iraqis, and Kuwaitis. They’ll teach it in South America, Africa, Southwest Asia—all over the world. But before we get into small-unit tactics, we work on basic individual and squad movement.”

  After a day of movement drills, the two ODAs move on to squad tactics. There are variations and permutations, but as a small unit—a squad or a platoon—they move in three basic elements: A-team, B-team, and C-team. The A-team is usually the assault element and the C-team is the fire-support element. The B-team, with the squad leader or patrol leader, is the command-and-control element. The essence of small-unit tactics is the management and coordination of these three elements in a tactical environment. Under the watchful eyes of the cadre, the teams practice group movements, danger crossings, security halts, recons, assaults, fire support, and actions on the objective. They use hand, arm, and various recognition signals. Toward the end of the five-day field exercise, they are running ambush drills—again and again—and rotating squad members through leadership positions. For the Rangers and combat veterans like Dolemont, it’s practice and review. For soldiers like Aaron Dunn who have come from a technical specialty, it’s the first time they’ve seen this training.

  After every tactical evolution, there is a critique. “All right,” Sergeant Warner says to 812 while 811 runs a battle drill, “while they train and we watch, we can still learn.” When 811 is finished, they are called in for a critique. “Give me three things eight-one-one did wrong,” Warner tells 812, and the men do. “Now three things they did right.” Again, the men in 812 offer their observations. “Now, eight-one-two, it’s your turn. Let’s go out there and make some new mistakes. Mistakes are OK, but don’t make the same mistake twice. Eight-one-one, it’s your turn to watch and learn.”

  While 812 prepares for the next drill, he turns to 811. “OK, think about what you did out there. What’s the one thing we can do to overcome mistakes when the bullets start flying?” Sid Warner is a combat veteran from 5th Group and recently back from duty in Afghanistan. “Violence of action, right? So don’t let the volume of fire slack off. Keep the pressure on the enemy; don’t let him regroup. And talk it up; yell it out along the line. Once the shooting starts, there’s no need for stealth—let the bad guys think there’s a battalion of you out there. Winning a firefight is often a matter of gaining the initiative and maintaining the initiative.”